9. From Global Governance to Global Disorder? Implications for Russia and China

The format and process that China and Russia engage in the existing global governing mechanism have been largely shaped by their historical departure from their respective communist legacies. China’s gradualist reform and rebuilding process helped it join the capitalist world trading system. The rapid change in the former Soviet Union left considerable frictions and contradictions in Russia and its “near-abroad” areas, orienting the post-Soviet space more toward geopolitical frictions than economic interdependence. Although both countries increasingly face a less friendly West in the new millennium, they have so far resisted the temptation to form a formal alliance due to their historical learning experience from their volatile interactions during the Cold War and their extensive ties with the Western liberal international order thereafter.